Capitol Punishment

I try to recommend insightful, well written books only. "Capitol Punishment", by itself, is neither.
The book, written by Jack Abramoff, however struck me as instructive. It instructs from the point of view of narcissism, the personality types that D.C. attracts, agent based economics, and dependency corruption.

Each of these topics are covered in other books that I have written about, the best among them being "Republic, Lost."

The main reason to read "Capitol Punishment," to me, is to listen carefully to the words that a lobbyist chooses in describing himself and to compare them to words that the reader might choose to describe being in a similar situation.

I found it disconcerting that Abramoff always described himself as the victim of evil forces and as always battling evil forces. To Abramoff, almost everyone else is a narcissist. His family, relatives, and 'friends' come off as set pieces in a self absorbed life and not as real people.

On the other hand, Abramoff's lobbying for legislation to help Indian tribes struck me, if the tribes were replaced by the names of honored or politically correct companies or organizations, to be what lobbyists do. At one point in the book, I asked how different the story would read if the group that was being helped were the Children's Hospital in Memphis or St. Olaf's college instead of the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands. My feeling about the story would change but the facts of the story probably would not.

Most useful, and a strong reason to read the book, was that "Capitol Punishment" gave direct examples of the dependency corruption of campaign funding on funders and legislators that was referred to in "Republic, Lost." Abramoff struck me as a not very self aware incarnation of the people that Lessig says are central to how government does not serve the people.